


Reclamation

by edibleflowers



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s01e14 The Christmas Invasion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5403968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edibleflowers/pseuds/edibleflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack needs that hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reclamation

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose this qualifies as a Doctor Who crossover. Set after "Christmas Invasion" and before the first Torchwood series. Gen.
> 
> Originally posted on my LJ on 1 December 2009. I just discovered it wasn't here (missed it in the original archiving of my fic)... oops.

"I'm going up to London," Jack shouted, halfway out the door.

"What?" Suzie yelled back. The door was already rolling shut. Tosh blinked at it, then across the open space of the Hub at Suzie.

"He said he's going to London."

"What the bloody fuck for?" Suzie turned to stare at the cogwheel door. "Tosh, see what sent him off like that."

Sighing, Tosh put down the circuit board she'd been rewiring and set her hands to the keyboard. It only took her a moment to get into Jack's files on the server; though theoretically none of them were supposed to look at each other's personal information, she didn't intend to probe into his private things. All she wanted was to see the latest emails -- and there, a notification of new reports. Back out of Jack's directory and into the shared folder they used to transfer large files to Torchwood One and vice versa.

"Here," she said, a minute later, and Suzie put down her soldering iron and came around to peer over her shoulder. "This must be it. New acquisitions. It was picked up on Christmas Day."

"But it's just a hand," Suzie said, puzzled. "What in hell would he want with a _hand_?"

"Maybe he's got a fetish?" suggested Owen, coming up from the autopsy bay, and Tosh smothered a laugh. Rolling her eyes, Suzie went back to her workstation. It wasn't as if she minded Jack being gone; anyway, she'd learned early on not to wonder about her employer's motivations. Jack wouldn't answer in any case.

* * *

"If it's nothing special, then there's no reason for me not to have it," Jack said wearily, for approximately the dozenth time.

Across from him, Yvonne Hartman leaned back behind her desk, arms folded. "And there's no reason for us to give it to you. I'm done talking about this, Captain."

"Clearly you're not, or I'd have been booted out of here by now," Jack said. He never tried the charm on Yvonne; it didn't work. He'd never met a colder woman, and he'd been to Hoya VII where the women were literally carved from ice. "So tell me what you want for it, and I'll see what I can do."

"The formula for your amnesia pills," Yvonne fired back.

Jack sighed. Yvonne asked for it once a week and he refused categorically every time. "You know that's not up for bargaining, Yvonne," he said. He barely trusted Torchwood One as it was; armed with Retcon, they'd lose any vestiges of control. "What else?"

"Why do you want it?" she asked.

He blinked at her. "Why do I want the hand?" His clarifying question earned a nod from her, and he swallowed. How to explain it? He'd taken great pains to make sure Torchwood One knew only of his abnormal life span. If they ever found out he'd travelled with the Doctor...

"Trophy of battle?" he offered. "Tosh gave you a lot of the tech you needed to shoot down that Sycorax ship."

Yvonne's smile was anything but amused. "Try again."

"You don't need it," he said once more, feeling desperate. He just wanted to get the hand and get out. Being in Canary Wharf always made him antsy.

"No," she said calmly. "But you want it, and that's enough for me. You really ought to have just requisitioned it, Jack. Coming up here to get it? That's tipping your hand. I thought you were smarter than that."

Standing, Yvonne walked around her desk and held open the door of her office in a clear dismissal. With a sigh, Jack stood to walk out. "Thanks for nothing," he told her, striding past the desks lined up outside the office, the boffins typing away on their computers, earpieces in place, studiously pretending they weren't witnessing any of this.

Yvonne _tsk_ ed at him. Fuming, Jack walked out of the room and down to the lifts without looking back. It was true; there was no good reason for him to want the hand. No reason except gut instinct.

Something had made the Sycorax turn tail and flee. Jack hadn't heard the sound of the TARDIS's engines grinding in over a hundred years -- not since he'd breathed in Dalek dust on the Gamestation and saw his mode of transportation disappearing on him -- and while he hadn't heard it on Christmas Day, either, he knew there was only one person who could intimidate a race of conquerors into flight.

And if he got that hand, maybe he could use it as an early detection system for the next time the Doctor stopped in Cardiff to refuel. But first he had to _get_ the goddamned thing.

He pressed the down button for the lift, calculating. Maybe he could charm his way into the Archives--

Next to him, someone quietly coughed, an attention-getting cough. Jack glanced over. The pretty girl from Yvonne's outer office stood there. "Captain Harkness," she said.

"That'd be me." Jack did smile this time, offering a hand. She placed hers in his, her slim fingers dark and small against his. "And you are?"

"Adeola Oshodi," she said. "I -- I couldn't help overhearing your conversation with the director. The -- the item you're after?"

Jack raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, if Yvonne sent you to--"

"No. No, it's nothing like that." Adeola drew her hand back as the lift doors opened. "It's only that I know someone in the Archives who could get it for you."

Jack's other eyebrow went up. "And why would you do that for me?"

She flushed, a pretty hue under her caramel skin. "Perhaps that would be something better explained elsewhere."

He didn't miss her casual glance upward, taking in the CCTV camera concealed behind a black bubble in the ceiling. "Of course," he said, and put his hand on her back to usher her into the lift.

Pressing the button for B-2, Adeola nodded. "No sound in here, just video. Make it look like you're flirting with me?"

"Trust me, that is not a problem." Jack grinned, reaching for her hand again. Leaning over it, he glanced at her again. "So tell me why you're helping me?"

"There are stories about you," she said, and for a moment Jack wondered if he'd be able to make this trip about pleasure as well as business. "Most of them seem a bit wild to be true, but there's one that goes around, that you've worked for Torchwood for hundreds of years."

 _Not so much, then,_ he thought, and sternly told his dick to settle down. "Not quite," he said, "but sort of, yeah. Why do you ask?"

"My grandmother." Adeola's head bent forward briefly. "She was visiting Wales with her parents when she was sixteen. A beast attacked them while they were out in the countryside. She said a man saved them, a man wearing odd clothing. He flirted with her and charmed my great-grandmother, refused to take any payment for stopping the creature. He claimed it was a lion that had escaped from a private menagerie, made sure they were safe." When she looked up at him now, her eyes were wide. Jack couldn't help his smile. He might have had some massive fuck-ups in the past, but his time on Earth hadn't been all bad.

"That was me," he confirmed. "Though your grandmother was lovely, she isn't a patch on you."

Adeola swallowed and then smiled. "I always thought it was you. She said you were dashing."

"Dashing." Jack grinned. "Huh. I can live with that."

The lift stopped, then, the doors opening to reveal a simple lobby with a desk, one door leading out from it. Adeola led him into the room, then stopped him. "Wait here," she said, and went up to the desk, reaching over it to press a buzzer.

A few moments later, the door opened and a slim young man emerged, looking harried. "Sorry," he said, "Alison's gone to lunch and didn't tell me. What did you need?"

"Artefact 6-X-57-22199," Adeola reeled off, lifting the security badge hung around her neck as a token of authority. "Yvonne wants it."

The young man nodded, briefly typing in the computer on the desk. "Right," he said, after a moment. "I'll go retrieve it." His eyes flickered over Jack without interest; he glanced at Adeola again and hurried out the door. She glanced back at Jack with a confident smile, and he winked at her in return.

It was only a few minutes to wait; the young man was back with a locked case, which he set on the desk; Adeola signed a clipboard to release it, and in moments they were back in the lift and heading up again.

"I'll be fine taking this out of the building?" Jack asked, nodding at the case on the floor.

"It's not keyed to the security," she confirmed. "And I've got this--" From the pocket of her jacket, she drew out a piece of paper, handing it to him. "Property pass. If the guard questions you, show it to him. They never look twice at it."

Jack swallowed and reached for the handle of the case. Even locked in metal as it was, he could feel a faint pulse of energy from the object within. He'd have to keep it in some kind of solution to preserve it, but this was it. The closest he'd come to the Doctor in over a hundred years.

"Thank you," he said, his voice thick.

"It's the least I can do," she said. "If it wasn't for you, my family and I wouldn't even be alive."

"Still," he said. The lift stopped at the lobby and Adeola gestured.

"Go. Before they get suspicious. You're lucky the guy covering the lunch shift is still pretty new and didn't ask questions. _Go_ ," she said again, and Jack smiled and stepped off the lift. Giving Adeola Oshodi a last nod, he strode out of the lobby and past the guard to the parked SUV, one step closer to finally getting his life back.


End file.
